NeTS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Experimental Platform for Low-Power Wireless Networking Research

用于短距离、低功率、无线硬件的传统架构集成了无线电收发器和通用微控制器。然而，微控制器具有有限的计算能力，因此限制了可以实现的算法的种类。此外，封闭的无线电架构阻止了对许多新颖应用所需的物理层的直接访问。低功耗FPGA的出现及其有效的占空比支持为创建一种新型无线平台以克服这些限制提供了机会。该项目基于低功耗FPGA器件为移动的无线网络开发了一种高度灵活的硬件/软件架构。高性能DSP和其他算法可以直接在硬件中实现，而其余代码则在FPGA内部的软处理器核心上运行。这种灵活的硬件/软件边界增加了软件开发的复杂性，通过复杂的开发工具支持和项目正在开发的广泛的软件组件库，软件开发的复杂性得到了缓解。对于许多应用，在同等功率下，这种小型廉价平台的性能比当前基于微处理器的硬件高两个数量级。因此，它将刺激新协议的研究，并实现今天不可能实现的新应用。将组织一场针对本科生的竞赛，获胜者将在范德比尔特的带薪暑期实习期间获得实现他们想法所需的硬件、软件、培训和指导。

The conventional architecture for short-range, low-power, wireless hardware integrates a radio transceiver and a general-purpose microcontroller. However, microcontrollers have limited computational power and hence, restrict the kinds of algorithms that can be implemented. Moreover, closed radio architectures prevent the direct access to the physical layer needed for many novel applications. The emergence of low-power FPGAs with their efficient duty cycling support presents an opportunity to create a novel wireless platform to overcome these limitations. The project develops a highly flexible hardware/software architecture for mobile wireless networking based on low-power FPGA devices. High performance DSP and other algorithms can be implemented directly in hardware, while the rest of the code runs on a soft processor core inside the FPGA. This flexible hardware/software boundary increases the complexity of software development that is eased via sophisticated development tool support and an extensive software component library that the project is also developing. The small inexpensive platform offers two orders of magnitude higher performance than current microcontroller-based hardware at equivalent power for many applications. Hence, it will stimulate research in novel protocols and enable new applications not possible today. A competition for undergraduate students will be organized in which winners will receive the hardware, software, training, and mentorship needed to carry out their ideas during a paid summer internship at Vanderbilt.